TODAY IN HISTORY
July 20, 1402: An Ottoman army under Sultan Bayezid I runs smack into the famed warlord Timur at the Battle of Ankara and is resoundingly defeated. Timur took Bayezid prisoner and shattered the nascent Ottoman empire, giving most of it back to its former Turkic rulers and leaving several Ottoman claimants to fight over what was left. An 11 year civil war known as the “Ottoman Interregnum” ensued, with Mehmed I emerging victorious and resuming the empire’s expansion.
July 20, 1969: The crew of Apollo 11 carries out the first manned landing on the moon. Very early the following morning, mission commander Neil Armstrong became the first human being (as far as we know, anyway; I don’t want to upset any Ancient Aliens fans) to walk on the lunar surface. Possibly you’ve heard about this before so I don’t think we need to go into much detail.
MIDDLE EAST
LEBANON
With Lebanese President Joseph Aoun in the US this week and scheduled to meet with Donald Trump on Tuesday, the US State Department announced on Monday that the Israeli military (IDF) is moving ahead with the first stage of the “pilot program” in southern Lebanon. Israeli forces are withdrawing from three southern Lebanese villages—Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar al-Gharbiyah—while the Lebanese army moves in behind them. Well, “withdraw” is stretching it a bit, since there were no Israeli forces in Froun and Srifa in the first place. There are Israeli forces in Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, however, which may be why it was added to the program (initially the IDF was only supposed to “pull out” of Froun and Srifa). The Lebanese army will be aiming to demonstrate that it can secure these areas from Hezbollah, in which case the intention is for the IDF to withdraw from additional areas and eventually (in theory) from all of southern Lebanon.
